"Yes, indeed," agreed Tom. "They'll be lucky if they save their ship. My, how that wind did blow!"
"You're right," put in Captain Weston. "When they get a hurricane down in this region it's no cat's paw. But they were a mighty2 careless lot of sailors. The idea of leaving the ladder over the side, and the boat in the water."
"It was a good thing for us, though," was Tom's opinion.
"Indeed it was," came from the captain. "But as long as we are safe now I think we'd better take a look about the craft to see if those chaps did any damage. They can't have done much, though, or she wouldn't be running so smoothly3. Suppose you go take a look, Tom, and ask your father and Mr. Sharp what they think. I'll steer4 for a while, until we get well away from the island."
The young inventor found his father and the balloonist busy in the engine-room. Mr. Swift had already begun an inspection5 of the machinery6, and so far found that it had not been injured. A further inspection showed that no damage had been done by the foreign guard that had been in temporary possession of the Advance, though the sailors had made free in the cabins, and had broken into the food lockers7, helping8 themselves plentifully9. But there was still enough for the gold-seekers.
"You'd never know there was a storm raging up above," observed Tom as he rejoined Captain Weston in the lower pilot house, where he was managing the craft. "It's as still and peaceful here as one could wish."
"Yes, the extreme depths are seldom disturbed by a surface storm. But we are over a mile deep now. I sent her down a little while you were gone, as I think she rides a little more steadily10."
All that night they speeded forward, and the next day, rising to the surface to take an observation, they found no traces of the storm, which had blown itself out. They were several hundred miles away from the hostile warship11, and there was not a vessel12 in sight on the broad expanse of blue ocean.
The air tanks were refilled, and after sailing along on the surface for an hour or two, the submarine was again sent below, as Captain Weston sighted through his telescope the smoke of a distant steamer.
"As long as it isn't the Wonder, we're all right," said Tom. "Still, we don't want to answer a lot of questions about ourselves and our object."
"No. I fancy the Wonder will give up the search," remarked the captain, as the Advance was sinking to the depths.
"We must be getting pretty near to the end of our search ourselves," ventured the young inventor.
"We are within five hundred miles of the intersection13 of the forty-fifth parallel and the twenty-seventh meridian14, east from Washington," said the captain. "That's as near as I could locate the wreck15. Once we reach that point we will have to search about under water, for I don't fancy the other divers16 left any buoys17 to mark the spot."
It was two days later, after uneventful sailing, partly on the surface, and partly submerged, that Captain Weston, taking a noon observation, announced:
"Well, we're here!"
"Do you mean at the wreck?" asked Mr. Swift eagerly.
"We're at the place where she is supposed to lie, in about two miles of water," replied the captain. "We are quite a distance off the coast of Uruguay, about opposite the harbor of Rio de La Plata. From now on we shall have to nose about under water, and trust to luck."
With her air tanks filled to their capacity, and Tom having seen that the oxygen machine and other apparatus18 was in perfect working order, the submarine was sent below on her search. Though they were in the neighborhood of the wreck, the adventurers might still have to do considerable searching before locating it. Lower and lower they sank into the depths of the sea, down and down, until they were deeper than they had ever gone before. The pressure was tremendous, but the steel sides of the Advance withstood it.
Then began a search that lasted nearly a week. Back and
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